by Melanie Card
“I’m surprised it isn’t the full sun, given the city’s history,” Nazarius said.
“Balance in everything.” Ward scooped up the pendant. The silver was cool against his skin and the points of the sun dug into his flesh. “You can’t have good without evil, life without death.”
Nazarius blew out a heavy breath. “Necromancers.”
“But true in this case.” Jotham reached for the chest and blinked. Gold flashed across his eyes, and he turned to Ward.
Ward stumbled back. Somehow, his gold eyes were as intimidating as the rith’s black.
Jotham blinked again, and the light vanished. “The pendant is what you need.”
“Good.” Nazarius snapped the lid closed. “Let’s go banish a rith.”
Seventeen
It was midday and they were back in the Executioner’s Square. Celia adjusted the sword at her hip, uncomfortable with the extra weight. Daggers were more her style. But Nazarius had insisted no one would believe she was a Quayestri without a sword, although she doubted—if anyone cared to look closely—that they’d think she and Ward were Quayestri in the first place. She could only pray their ploy lasted long enough for them to take care of business.
Ward stood on the executioner’s platform at the back, tracing the octagon and goddess-eyes he’d drawn last night with more blood. At least it wasn’t night this time. However, what weak daylight there was did little to dispel her unease. Heavy clouds had gathered around the mountain’s peaks, blotting out the sun and threatening rain. The city pulsed with an eerie glow, the witch-stone somehow turning ominous instead of welcoming.
It didn’t help that Ward had requested a full jug of blood from the knackers, and the soldier who’d been commanded to fetch it had given them all dark looks. They hadn’t even been anywhere near the Executioner’s Square when it had been delivered, but she didn’t doubt word had already spread through Dulthyne’s barracks that the Quayestri were doing something unnatural.
And they were. Using blood magic, even given everything she’d seen since meeting Ward—maybe because of everything she’d seen—made her skin crawl. It didn’t help that the last time they’d tried this, the rith had made the ground bleed.
Jotham said something to Nazarius, but they stood on the other side of the square and she couldn’t make out their words. Nazarius rested a hand on Jotham’s shoulder, most likely reassuring the Seer that Ward knew what he was doing.
Once this spell was done, she was getting answers from Ward. Like why Nazarius was such a staunch supporter of his and hadn’t arrested him like his Quayestri mandate demanded. Did the Tracker know Ward had the brand of Quayestri justice seared on the back of his neck? For all she knew, Nazarius had been involved in Ward’s sentencing.
Regardless, Quayestri couldn’t be trusted. Sooner or later, Nazarius would reveal his true nature and then she’d have to kill him, probably with the sword he’d told her to wear.
Ward straightened, his gaze trained on the octagon. She eased to the platform, making certain she didn’t draw Nazarius’s or Jotham’s attention. Flecks of witch-stone light glimmered in the wet blood. Ward hadn’t watered it down this time, and the lines were thick and dark. The crystals and herbs sat above the open and closed goddess-eyes, alternating at each point, and even they had taken on a hint of the witch-stone glow.
A shiver swept over her, and she fought to hide it. This was necessary, and Ward, regardless of the cost, would do what was necessary. “Are we set?”
“I think so.” Ward poured blood into a bowl and sat in the center of the octagon. “The only way I could get more power is if I used human blood instead of animal.”
Celia glanced back at Nazarius and Jotham. Thank the Goddess they hadn’t heard that. “I wouldn’t say that too loudly. Particularly not here.” Not with Dulthyne’s bloody history.
“You know I wouldn’t use it.” He didn’t meet her gaze and for a heartbeat he looked guilty.
“You had no choice with Macerio. He forced you to use human blood. If you hadn’t, he would have killed us. That’s not who you are.” She reached for his hand, to squeeze it and give him comfort. But the gesture wasn’t going to be enough, and she didn’t know how he’d take it. Even if he did take it the way she wanted, the way she’d thought he’d felt this morning when she’d straightened his Inquisitor pin, it wouldn’t be fair to him.
She pulled her hand away. Now wasn’t the time. “You’re just doing what you have to do.”
“This has to work, so I’m risking…other things by using more blood.” He swallowed hard and drew the bowl closer.
A chill slid through Celia. “Is this safe?”
“It’ll be alright. Some meditation and rest after all of this is done and I’ll be good as new.” He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “The rith might fight again, but with the sun-moon pendant immersed in the blood, it’ll be locked to my will.”
“That’s what immersing something in blood does?” She couldn’t drag her attention away from the dark viscous liquid in the bowl.
“Blood contains soul magic. When you put something in blood, you immerse it in power. Add a drop of your own blood and that power is yours…if your will is strong enough.”
Another shiver swept over her. “Necromancy really is dark.”
“This isn’t just necromancy, it’s true blood magic. That’s why it feels so…wrong. Necromancy is the ability to control the soul and use soul magic, the magic found within blood. It doesn’t require a lot of blood and animal blood will suffice. It’s a magical gift from the Goddess with the great responsibility to maintain the balance between life and death.”
“Not what Macerio was doing,” she said.
Ward blew out a long breath. “No. Innecroestri warp that magical gift and use it to disrupt the balance. A disrupted balance causes death to right imbalances, sometimes famine, plagues, and even wars. There’s more power in human blood, so Innecroestri use that to power their unnatural spells.”
“And true blood magic?” Celia wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“True blood magic uses human sacrifices to cast spells not necessarily related to the soul. The rith is a restless spirit. Capturing its soul is more like a Brother of Light’s binding spell.”
This was getting complicated, but to understand Ward, it would help to understand his world. “So it’s like true magic, like the magic possessed by a Brother of Light?”
“More powerful than that.” Ward’s gaze dipped to the bowl of blood. “A Brother usually only has one ability, but a magi can do anything.”
“So a blood magi, like what Diestro was, could do anything with magic, but he got his power from blood.” That chill swept over her again.
“Exactly. So I’m using blood magic to bind the rith to my will, and necromancy to get it to cross the veil.”
“How dangerous is this?” All the stories said the blood magic had driven Diestro insane. There were good reasons for why blood magic was illegal.
“I won’t lie. It isn’t safe.” Ward pricked his finger with his dagger and let two drops fall into the bowl. “But this is my best bet. The sooner we get this done, the safer everyone will be. I might not be a strong necromancer, but anyone can cast magic with enough blood. That’s Dulthyne’s history.”
She met his dark gaze. A great weariness stared back at her, and a great determination. The black eyes he’d gotten from the fight in Macerio’s mansion seemed paler, as if in the few days they’d been hunting for Allette it had done seven or eight days worth of healing. She wished the bruise on her cheek from that same fight would do the same. No wonder Talbot didn’t like them. With Ward’s black eyes, and her bruises and bandaged wrist, they looked like the motleyest Quayestri around.
She drew her sword, not that it would help much against the rith. “Let’s do this.”
Ward squared his shoulders and Celia dragged her attention away from him to Nazarius. Both the Tracker and the Seer looked grim. Nazarius stood with his
hands in their usual position, while Jotham shifted beside him, arms crossed.
Once again a shiver of Ward’s magic crackled over her skin. She forced her body to relax, but her nerves twitched—and not with the anticipation she would have felt even a week ago at the prospect of danger. Everything was so much more complicated when there was someone else involved.
Ward dipped a finger into the bowl, swirled the blood around the sun-moon pendant, and mumbled something.
Nothing happened.
Nazarius slid a sidelong glance at Celia, his expression clear: this wasn’t working. She opened her mouth to tell him to be patient and give Ward time, when the pennants on the keep’s wall snapped taut and a rush of frigid air blasted over her. It stung her face and hands and tore at her hair and clothing. Jotham gasped and stumbled back, his robes whipping around him. Nazarius lengthened his stance and his grip on his weapons tightened, whitening his knuckles.
Ward leaned into the wind, eyes half closed, protecting the bowl of blood. “I summon thee.”
The wind snapped again, a sharp crack biting into Celia’s flesh. With it came the same throaty laughter as before. She glanced around the square, searching the dark corners and the shadowed archways to find the voice. But it whirled around her, bouncing from the hard walls until it felt as if the laughter surrounded her.
“Show yourself, rith.” The wind swept up Ward’s words and devoured them in its roar.
The laughter increased. The sky darkened even more, night falling in the middle of the day. The witch-stone imbedded in the city walls pulsed, rapid and desperate, like a terrified heartbeat. Pebbles rattled against the bricks and bounced in through the three archways, witch-stone shards among them. The glowing chips twitched with the gale and flashed across her vision.
“I said show yourself, rith.” The muscles in Ward’s arms and back trembled. Blood spilled over the lip of the bowl and flew from his fingers in a dark mist.
Laughter and wind roared around them, devouring sound and breath and thought. She couldn’t find the source. She could barely see through the gale.
Blood spray stood out stark on Ward’s pale face and the white sleeves of his shirt. Magic snapped across her skin with uneven spikes. Her cheeks and fingers burned from the cold, and her mind spun with the vortex.
With a whoosh, the wind stopped.
Everything stopped.
Celia couldn’t hear anything past the ringing in her ears and the pounding of her pulse. The witch-stone chips, unmoving on the ground, flickered and went dark. So, too, did the veins in the walls.
Out of the gloomy stillness curled throaty laughter, higher in pitch than before. It sent a shiver of recognition racing through Celia.
It was Lyla, one of Macerio’s other vesperitti. That was the sound of her mirth as she’d chased Celia through Macerio’s library. Evil. Seductive. Except Celia had killed Lyla.
The laugh increased.
Celia shot her gaze over the square, searching for the source.
There. A shadow by the farthest arch.
The witch-stone burst into full light with blinding brightness. Celia squinted against it. She would not close her eyes and leave Ward exposed.
The shadow in the arch stepped forward, revealing Lyla…no, Allette. The soft, shy peasant from Macerio’s mansion was gone. Instead, what stood before them was an arrogant, angry monster, just like Lyla.
Celia raised her sword and pointed it at the vesperitti’s heart.
“You think that’s going to hurt me?” Allette asked.
“Why don’t you come here and we’ll find out.”
Allette chuckled. “Your boys are confused, and your whelp of a necromancer is wasting his time.”
From the corner of her eye, Celia saw Nazarius draw closer. “You got silver?” she whispered.
Nazarius nodded.
“I can still hear you,” Allette said. “Enhanced hearing, you know.”
“Good, then you know I’m going to kill you.” Celia sheathed her sword, yanked out the silver knife in her dagger’s sheath, and rushed at Allette. The wind swept up again and knocked Celia back. She staggered and fought to keep her balance.
“I think you have bigger problems.” Allette blew a kiss and stepped back into the shadow of the archway as more laughter, deeper and masculine, roared through the square.
Eighteen
Ward leapt to his feet, leaving the bowl on the platform, and yanked his silver surgical knife from his sheath. He couldn’t let Allette get away.
Celia reached for him and said something, but he couldn’t hear her above the magic rushing through him. It reeled in a frenzied vortex, sweeping up his essence and threatening to consume it. Everything was painted in brilliant white light, flecked with bursts of red as if somehow he could see another kind of magic than just soul magic. It had to be his mind making the distinction between magic from blood outside the body and blood still within the body. Some necromancers and Brothers of Light saw auras in that way, some could feel it, others smell it.
He blinked. He knew it was his imagination, but the vision remained. Celia’s aura pulsed white, Nazarius’s and Jotham’s as well but to a lesser degree, the pure power in their souls making their auras radiant. At his feet, red, smoky magic curled from the bowl of blood and at its center pulsed a black mass. That had to be the sun-moon pendant and the evil of the rith’s essence within it, or at least how his imagination was making him see it, and above, a sliver of white fractured the dark sky, a representation of the slit he’d created in the veil.
He sheathed the knife and knelt. The rith first, then Allette. Except the rith hadn’t come when he’d called. Maybe Allette was right. He didn’t have any great magic.
But all this blood was supposed to compensate for that. He had the foreman’s treasured pendant. The rith should be bound to Ward’s will.
Unless Ward was even more of a failure than Allette believed.
Celia inched closer. Her eyes glowed, icy blue. Imagined magic swirled in her irises. “You all right?”
The magic within him pulsed. She blinked and his magic pulsed again.
If he didn’t have any power, how could he explain Celia? Even his imagination saw her aura as alive as Nazarius and Jotham, except he knew she was supposed to be dead.
The smoky magic from the blood curled over his hands. It billowed and slid around his neck and across his face. Heat followed, painting even the white magic red. He had blood.
“Ward?” she asked.
Blood was strength. He’d brought Celia back with his blood, not a slaughtered animal’s but his own. All he needed was more blood and human.
She reached for him, her hand about to cross the octagon.
“Don’t.”
She froze.
“Don’t break the octagon. The rith is coming. Get ready.” He just needed more blood, and Celia couldn’t see, couldn’t know what he planned.
He jerked his chin to the archways. She met his gaze, and even through the red haze her eyes still emanated icy blue power.
The red undulated around her.
His fingers itched for his blade. One quick slice through his flesh and he’d have power.
She looked ready to say something, accuse him of succumbing to the blood magic lure, but instead, she gave a tight nod, turned back to the archways, and deepened her fighting stance.
Now. He had to do it now.
He drew his dagger and sliced his palm. Pain bit his hand and the imaginary red surrounding him flared. His eyes watered at the brightness, and he struggled to breathe through its sudden thickness. Goddess, his imagination had never felt so real before, not even when he’d cast the spell to free Allette from Macerio. The sensations permeated every fiber of his being with sticky tendrils.
This dark stickiness had to be because he felt guilty about it—because the rith said he’d succumb to the blood magic lure.
Well, within moments the rith would be gone and proven wrong. He had the power.
With his mind, Ward gathered the magic, rolling it into a heavy ball, tighter and tighter. It trembled with explosive strength, vibrating through him. His teeth chattered with it. He clenched his jaw, grabbed the bowl, and shot the ball into it, wrapping it around the sun-moon pendant. The rith was his. It would obey his commands, and it would cross the veil.
“Show yourself, rith.”
Something quivered within the pendant.
“Rith.” It would obey.
The pendant twitched and splashed more blood over the edge of the bowl. It ran over Ward’s fingers, coating them even more.
The red magic pulsed again. The whole platform glowed with a bloody light—his imagination gone wild. Ward shoved more magic into the pendant and prayed he could grab the thread connecting it to the rith. “I said show yourself.”
“Maybe if you asked nicely I’d be more inclined to make an appearance.” A man, with dark hair and of average height and weight, stepped into the square through the left archway. Blackness wept from his eyes, swirling around him with smoky tendrils. In front of him, a black heart pulsed, oozing more black smoke.
The rith cupped the phantom heart. “You see it, little necromancer, but you don’t understand it. Not yet.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s time for you to cross the veil.” Ward shot a blast of magic at the shimmering white fracture above him, tearing the veil open further.
The rith threw his head back and laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“You have no choice.” Ward willed more magic around the pendant. In his imagination, it was thick with red energy, throbbing in time to his racing heart.
“That’s not going to do it,” the rith said.
“I think it will.” But the blackness around the rith didn’t weaken and wasn’t peeling off the man or being pulled into the veil.
“Why don’t you try again.” The rith chuckled. “How about I bring a friend to help?”
A woman stepped through the right archway. Blackness bled from her eyes, and the phantom heart pulsed against her chest. “Does it work now, necromancer?” she asked.